My Touchstone Autobiography

Again, I still do not have time to write in this blog for now. Crammed up in between my paper works and final requirements, I still believe it isn't right to just abandon this blog until I'm requirement-free. Since I discovered this piece amongst my long-forgotten folders, I might as well post it here. This is actually the autobiography I submitted when I became Touchstone for a brief moment. I do not write as well as the other two Touchstones do, but I still feel good just to reach this far. :)

P.S. I know, I called myself "Katherine" here. But what could I do? I do not just introduce myself as "Aine" to people who do not even know how to pronounce it correctly. So, yeah. Haha. Here you go.



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It was during that moment when she decided to give up on her childhood dreams of becoming an actress and a naturalist when she realized she had unconsciously loved both language and literature even before she had started those dreams.

Katherine was seven when she started writing poems for her parents. It was nothing fancy. She was not a prodigy like the kids we see on Promil and other milk ads. The poems she used to write were ones with the basic rhyme schemes as if they were Mother Goose's nursery rhymes' offsprings. Eventually, she put her love for writing poems on hold when she was towards the end of her grade school years – the time she realized she was barely good enough. After her graduation, there was only a brief and unnoticeable transition before she entered MSU-IIT Integrated Developmental School. Soon enough, her previous affair with literature had been strangled by her environment. Suddenly she was trained for the maths and sciences. Although it was somehow agonizing on her part to face numbers and scientific symbols the most part of the day, she obliged, and the only breather she had for the day was her English class.

For three long years she had convinced herself she'd be a naturalist, and do documentaries on the chimpanzees in the tropical rainforests of the Southeast. Almost. On her fourth year, she traced her steps back to her first love: writing, and this time, she didn't care. It was in this year that she had been loose of her chains. She began writing short stories and unfinished novellas and eventually filled her room with piles of cheap notebooks she calls “manuscripts”. It was a hobby she privately enjoyed, until the day she entered the world of filmmaking.

On her senior year, Katherine had written and directed a film, Checkmate, which made its way to Cinemagis, a regional film festival. She received the award for Best Director and was also chosen to be one of the delegates of CinemaRehiyon, a national film festival by NCCA. This was the moment she had been dubbed as Philippine's Youngest Independent Director, though she personally thinks it's no big deal since no more than a few people she knows care anyway. She kept that to herself for a while, like a Cinderella who just got home from the royal ball.

Sometimes, Katherine thinks, she just always was too early for anything. When she wanted to see the world for the first time, she was one month premature. Then when she wanted to read better, she started school early. Katherine wouldn't be eighteen until next year, and she's on her third year in college already. Ironically, she values time. She believes there is a time for everything, and the things in this life would eventually meet her at some point. All she has to do is wait.

It is in her weaknesses that she believes she shines the most, because by then it would not be she who is at work, but the Lord, Whom she takes her strength from. Like an ancient chant, she repeats this in her head everyday: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” And it's true. She does believe in it with all of her heart.

Katherine Aine Codas is a proud Subanon. Her roots could be traced back to the tribes living at the Zamboanga del Sur area. It was her father who taught her to embrace her identity because that was one of the things that made her special. She embraced her color, and eventually, the unusual stories about her ancestors both her dad and her grandfather used to tell her. She loves being a Filipina. She wants to write more about her native land. She dreams to showcase her culture through her works. She wants to write about her own people. She wants to look back at the real Philippines. As an English major, Katherine wishes to make known to the world what it still does not know about our country. She wants the world to see this beauty that had been hidden for so long. That is the legacy she wants to leave her fellow A.B. English students. She wants them to look back and search for that lost connection we used have with our native land. Our culture. Our arts. The traditions we had forgotten. And even our old stories. If we could never go back to it, at least we could share them to the world. Katherine believes that it is one of our roles as English majors to make the real “us” globally known.

Katherine is just an ordinary girl you might have even bumped into a couple of times, though you never seemed to notice. She might even be what people regard to as invisible. Although it does not bother her, she realized it maybe was time for her to shine the light. Yes. Maybe it was time for her lamp to be uncovered. She might not know how big the impact she would be making now she's a Touchstone of the month, but she would try to let the candle glow even brighter. Things, she believes, would be better.

She believes in change. She believes in light. She believes it never is too late for anything.